Seven Stories
by Oldwickedsongs
Summary: HP/Sandman Crossover "We exist because they know, deep down in their hearts, that we exist..." Seven visitations as various characters stumble unto the realms of each of the Endless and leave their mark on one another.


**Disclaimer:** "If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended,  
That you did but slumber'd here while these visions did appear.  
And this weak and idle theme is no more yielding then a dream."

-Midsummer's Night Dream

**Author's Note:** A crossover with Neil Gaiman's Sandman stories. There will be seven stories, one for each of the Endless with a Harry Potter character. Please read and review.

**Seven Stories**

**By: Lady Erised**

**One: Despair**

There is a boy, small and forgotten in the corner of the room. He is a small thing, even for one so young but his eyes are strong: pitch black and emotionless. Everything else about him screams fear. He is pale skinned, his face hallowed out by lack of sleep. He cannot sleep because of the heavy footsteps in the hall that he always hears even when they aren't there. He can't help it. His stomach use to ache, from hunger or fear but it has long since abandoned that fruitless pursuit. Now it throbs. It makes his small hands shake, and the boy's bony red knuckles crack as he flexes them against the cold.

He looks like a spider, long limbed and awkward as he tries harder and harder still to push himself into the corner and drown out the noise.

It doesn't matter what the two figures scream. He doesn't really listen to them to know what they say: all that matters is the noise they make, loud and disembodied, and just outside the hall. Certain words will make it through the walls and his silent prayers and those words make him jump like if they are the blows that will come later. It is not always, but they do come and when they do, all he can do is crawl closer into himself and remain silent.

He sits there, cradled against the corner, thinking he is the only one there and no one can save him. He is right, in a manner. No one can save him because no one will try.

But he is not alone; she has her hooks in him.

Despair moves slowly but he can already feel her, like the cold whistled against the newspapers they put on the windows. Her hook is in his heart. It tears but he does not bleed. That is her beauty, she can keep tearing at you but you will never bleed, not in anyway that will help.

She is fat and naked. He doesn't notice as she sits beside him, large fingers reach pass his defenses and run tenderly through his tangled, greasy hair, nails dragging across his scalp. He bleeds. He slumps under her touch, the way a flower is pelted under the storm. She shifts her large arm against those frail shoulders and he curls closer to her, as if he thinks for a moment that he can disappear into her body. Perhaps he does. Her hooks catch his cheeks, and the small boy cries soundlessly; his pleads swallowed up by her mere presence.

Together they listen to his parents argue like it was rain on the rooftop. Later, when his father enters, she will retreat just long enough for that work to be done. Then, she will rock him to troubled sleep so they can do this again tomorrow.

* * *

The boy is no longer in the corner, and he has buried himself deep in black and years. In truth, the only hint that the man standing in the dungeons was ever that child in the house are those emotionless eyes that still gleam onyx against a bone white skull. He no longer trembles, but his frame is lean, his fingers are red-knuckled and hard. His face is craved from bone, angular and dead. There are no tears. There are no prayers.

But she sits, watching him. Her hooks tear at his forearm, because his heart has long since calloused. There is no blood left in him. She takes her time, tenderly, cutting small and deliberately around a scar that braces the arm like she once cradled the small boy.

He doesn't react as the rusty hook catches his skin, and pulls free. He seems to take comfort from the rhythm. There is familiarity in her movements; there is comfort in her consistency. He has been her constant companion for his entire life now. He has sought her above all of her siblings, even when he took her older sister's name as his title. He cannot help himself.

It upset her twin to know this. Desire rarely takes slight well, and not at all when she is cast aside for her sister. She wonders if this is why it ended the way it did, with the woman he loved.

And because Despair thinks of Lily, the man does and that empty heart bleeds. Despair shifts then, standing on her large legs, moving more readily then the seasons and quieter then his regrets, she moves towards him. Taking him in her arms, her clammy cheek nuzzling between his shoulder blades. Reaching her clipped nails around, Despair digs her hook deep into his chest and pulls. If he notices at all, he makes no sign of it.

He just rests in her arms, and waits for the next cut.


End file.
